So here are three easy ways to determine if you aren’t saying no enough—and what to do about it.

Problem: You’re playing Whac-A-Mole. You already know what I mean, don’t you? You’re racing around, feverishly putting out fires. Before you can complete a task, another pops up, and you’re too stressed and distracted to stay put. You find yourself struggling to make progress or identify what, exactly, you accomplished at the end of the day.

Solution: Life wheel and listen. Whether you’re playing this exhausting game in work or life (or both), you need to put down the mallet and reevaluate your priorities. One simple way to do this is to consider the life wheel. There are eight buckets on the wheel: family, work, money, personal growth, health and wellness, spirituality, community, and living environment. You must decide which three are most important to you. Does this “mole” fall into one of those buckets? If not, stop chasing it.

Problem: You subscribe to the insane-but-doable mentality. When I worked in the nonprofit world, this was always our approach to work. We were stretched beyond measure, but we prided ourselves on knowing we could pull off our insane-but-doable workload. This ultimately left us exhausted—and eventually a step or two behind where we needed to be.

Solution: Consider the cost. If you’re “pulling it off” all the time, do you really think the resulting work is up to standard? I know it wasn’t for my team and me. Sure, we were checking things off the list, but we were sacrificing quality in the name of quantity, and we were headed toward burnout. This approach also means you’re rarely able to stop and evaluate the direction you’re headed. Prioritize and win.

Problem: You’re saying yes and regretting it later. We’ve all experienced the familiar pangs of regret as we prepare to head out the door to a function. “Why did I agree to this?” we often ask ourselves. Or perhaps you’re knee-deep in a project and quickly realizing it’s pulled you away from a more important task. Now you’re stuck devoting precious time to something that seems inconsequential.

Solution: Embrace Greg McKeown’s 90% rule. In his book Essentialism, Greg McKeown suggests ranking your opportunities on a scale from 1 to 100. If the invite or request ranks below a 90, move it to a 0 and politely decline. “If something is just or almost good enough…then the answer should be a no,” he writes. This allows you to filter out your watered-down yeses so you have a clear purpose behind each decision.

Parting thought: It’s OK to be selfish with your yeses. As McKeown notes, you have to make your peace with the fact that saying no might mean trading popularity for respect. It’s unquestionably worth it.

I am an Executive and Life Coach who proudly guides clients through personal and professional transitions so that they may participate fully in all life has to offer. I help clients shed the “shoulds” in their lives—eliminating the non-essential to free up time to thrive. Pr...